A blog for beginners in the creative space. Beginner to intermediate tips, tricks and tutorials on several Adobe products, especially After Effects, Premiere Pro and Photoshop. Who knows what else!

After Effects Interface question

As you can probably imagine, there is a lot of internal emails that fly about inside of Adobe and its extended developer community. One such email came from a developer who made a comment. In essence, he said that some users prefer After Effects 6.5 since it is the last version with a ‘decent Mac interface.’

This struck me as very odd, but it reminded me that some users didn’t like the panels driven interface. Certainly, it is a minority but its out there. My question to those users is why?

My defense of the AE user interface isn’t based on the fact that I am an Adobe employee, nor is it based on the fact that I came to AE after 6.5 (I didn’t). And while we’re on the subject, why is 6.5 a Mac interface? Is it not a PC interface???

To me, Mac or otherwise, the standardized UI across all of the Adobe apps represents a significant improvement over panels flying all over the screen. Whats more is the interface will automatically adapt to any screen resolution you have – giving you maximum utilization of your screen real estate on any given system. As an aside, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve appreciated that feature as I fly about the country demonstrating various Adobe apps on different screens, projectors and systems… 😉

The other thing besides not pushing panels about constantly is the fact that reconfiguring the interface is improved as well. If I need more timeline area, I can drag it up and all of the affected other panels automatically conform to fit. In the past, I would resize one window and then push another two or three around to make it fit again.

Like I said, I don’t get it and am curious to learn what I may be misunderstanding.

To those of you who prefer the floating panels, there is a workspace option that allows you to undock all of your panels. This in effect would give you the ‘classic 6.5 look.’

But back again to the question – if you are a long AE user and prefer the 6.5 way of things, can you tell me why? I’m very curious.